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Tyne Daly's TV courtship still thriving:
'Amy' pay frees her for play days
USA TODAY - February 8, 2000
By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY
HOLLYWOOD -- Get the Emmys ready: Tyne Daly's back in prime time.
In the record books as the most honored dramatic actress in Emmy history, with five statues for her work on Cagney
& Lacey and Christy, Daly is winning raves and ratings as Maxine Gray, the tough-talking mom and social worker
on CBS' Judging Amy.
"I'm loving it," Daly says in an interview in her production trailer. "But it's the same old (TV)
thing. There's never enough time, never enough money and all that, but the payoff is that you get to see what you
did once a week. You get to find out whether what you did is a solid piece of furniture or a three-legged
table."
So far there's no wobbling: Judging Amy is the season's top-rated new drama. Amy (Tuesdays, 10 p.m. ET/PT) stars Amy
Brenneman as Amy Gray, a juvenile court judge who lives with her daughter, Lauren, and mom, Maxine, in Hartford,
Conn. Brenneman's own mother, Frederica, was a juvenile court judge there and inspired the series.
Each episode is taped over eight days at Paramount Studios here, and unlike the Cagney days, when Daly was in most
scenes, she gets a day or two off per episode.
"I'm old now, so that's comforting, not to work the old lady so hard."
Daly, who will turn 54 on Feb. 21, now falls into the supporting- actress category, an area she says she has always
been in: "Real actors support the writer, the director, every member of the company. Acting is a team sport.
The star category has always been a little uncomfortable for me."
Just don't ask Daly to call it a night too soon. An actor's actor, she once phoned executive producer Joseph Stern
late at night to complain that production had wrapped before she perfected her performance.
"It was painful to hear the message," Stern says. "She really took me to task. Her dedication is so
pure, and it makes everyone better because she's never satisfied."
Her acting passion may be genetic: Born Ellen Tyne Daly in Madison, Wis., she is the daughter of the late actor
James Daly, with whom she worked from 1969 to 1976 in a recurring role on Medical Center as his character's
daughter. One of her brothers is actor Tim Daly of Wings.
She has three daughters with former husband Georg Stanford Brown, and two are pursuing acting. She currently is
linked romantically with actor Clarence Williams III (The Mod Squad).
Cagney & Lacey came into Daly's life in 1981 as a TV movie, and it turned into a series in 1982. CBS canceled
the landmark series three times in six years, and when it concluded, Daly went on the road to do the musical Gypsy.
She returned to TV in 1994 for two seasons of Christy.
Daly likes the role of Maxine because she is "angry."
"People always complain about their mothers and find them interfering and impossible, so I was interested in
playing a person who was a mother and a human being, who was not only her child's opinion of her. That gave a lot of
possibilities," Daly says. "When you do a series, you look for room to move with a character."
Daly attributes the success of Amy to its courtroom issues. "We live in an incredibly litigious society, so
stories about court are interesting," she says. "And also because children are the big footballs in
divorces, and children seem to be some kind of commodity now, and we're reflecting some of the ideas of it takes a
village to raise a child."
Daly knows that with a hit series and a regular paycheck, she'll be able to go to Ireland this summer and perform
plays by Bertolt Brecht -- "I can afford to do that now."
Copyright © 2000 USA Today. All rights reserved.
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